NEWS: Softcard now available for Nokia Lumia Icon on Verizon Wireless

I actually stumbled upon this myself at the end of last month and planned on writing about it earlier but never got around to it.

Verizon Wireless’ Nokia Lumia Icon is now supported by Softcard, the mobile payment system that uses your phone to wirelessly pay for transactions at the point-of-sale.

WHAT IS SOFTCARD?Softcard enables you to pay for things at cash registers with your phone. It’s a system that uses the Near Field Communications (NFC) transceiver on your Nokia Lumia Icon to securely transmit your “payment information”. This payment information may be a credit card, a debit card, or an American Express charge card.Softcard receiver in front of you that looks like this:

Basically all you do is, when the retailer give you your total cost, you hold your phone up to the Softcard receive (that has the symbol in the photo above) and your phone will transmit the appropriate payment info to the register and pay for your purchase.

WHY SOFTCARD? I was excited about being able to use Softcard because of a number of reasons:

POINT-OF-SALE PROTECTION When you use Softcard, your credit card number and details is never visible to the person working the register. There’s no opportunity for individuals to steal your credit card details because they never see them. It’s all done electronically & securely.

DATA BREACH PROTECTION If you’re one of the 100’s of millions of consumers who’s credit card information was stolen by hackers from Target, Home Depot, Neiman Marcus, etc. you know that things are a lot better when you’re not handing over your credit card number to a retailer. Softcard eliminates the possibility of someone stealing your credit card information while it sits in some store’s databases… since it never actually passes that info to the store.

REWARDS & PROMOTIONS When you purchase things via Softcard, there are certain promotions & offers that you get, such as “buy 4 snacks from an eCard vending machine, and get the 5th free”. (This is an actual promo) Also when you pay for an item, it can automatically transmit your rewards/loyalty card information, if the vendor support loyalty card transmission.

SIGNATURE-FREE I’ve discovered that after making a Softcard payment, I’m usually not asked to sign a receipt like I would with a credit card swipe.

WHAT ARE THE REQUIREMENTS FOR SOFTCARD? There are 4 things that you need to use Softcard:

Security-enabled cellular SIM card. This is most current SIMs however not all. If Softcard doesn’t work on your phone and you meet all other requirements, it means you need to trade your phone’s SIM for one that’s got security-enabled.

WHAT CARRIERS SUPPORT SOFTCARD? AT&T & Verizon Wireless both support it now and T-Mobile does as well however I’ve heard mixed things about T-Mobile’s Softcard availability. Go the the web site to download the Softcard app for your phone and carrier.